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But that was just the preview of the Pro Mod fun this night. John Russo set a provisional world record and top qualifier when he cranked out a blistering 6.012 / 234.09 pass in his ’68 Camaro. This set up the quickest IHRA Pro Mod field ever – the bump spot was an amazing 6.106 / 231.83, and Danny Rowe held it down. And the crowd went wild.
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Stott wasn’t the only one with a hero qualifying run on Saturday. Rob Atchison in Alcohol Funny Car was 48 points behind Mark Thomas, but was on the wrong side of the qualifying eight – Friday he was 10th, Saturday at 5:15 p.m., he was 14th. Not too good. He punched in with a 5.776 / 246.44 about three hours later to secure the No. 2 spot. But Thomas was on his heels in 4th with 5.831 / 243.02.
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Unfortunately, everyone didn’t beat the odds this night. Candyce Marsh of nearby Raleigh, NC, attempted to qualify as the first African-American woman racing in professional drag competition. Her Pro Mod run of 6.541 / 208.55 put her 30th on the grid. Since racing runs in the family (her dad was a Sportsman racer) watch for her in the future.
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The full-up capacity crowd was getting more than its money’s worth. That is until an oil-down at the top end around 10:00 p.m. or so by Top Fueler T.J. Zizzo. He was a mighty fireball at the lights, but got in the show. By about 10:45 p.m. the track still hadn’t gone green and that was enough for many in the stands. They had seen record runs and decided to beat the traffic and made for the gates. An oil-down shouldn’t take so long to clean up – particularly this late in the rounds -- unless a hole was blown in the track. With rain securely in the forecast for Sunday, it didn’t look good for Sunday.
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It was raining buckets Sunday morning and looked like on the weather radar the day would succumb to the weather. Track drying started and stopped as the rain would roll in and then tease enough to make you think it was done. In the interest of full disclosure and making sure that DRO’s reporting Methodist fisheye clarity applies to ourselves as well as others -- I checked out from the inaction around 11:00 a.m. and started the drive home. I had other stories to get done in the coming week, too. My notes from the IHRA Finals stopped on Sunday.
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So, of course the track would go green from about 5-8:30 p.m. Sunday and Josh Hernandez would take this window of opportunity to jack a Pro Mod run out of the strip. He posted up the first sub-six second pass in IHRA history at 5.990 / 236.80 in the second round of eliminations. He bested Tony Pontieri’s magnificent run and 0.04 tree advantage and 6.048 / 234.49. Which would likely have won on any other track at any other time against any other opponent. This was the quickest Pro Mod side-by-side run ever, and it all happened about the time I drove up in my driveway. Well, I can always watch it on SPEED on Monday Oct 30th at 5:00 p.m. or Saturday Dec. 2nd at 6:00 p.m. Thanks a lot Josh for plowing through the soup-like conditions. Russo’s 6.012 record set Saturday night lasted about 24 hours. At least I saw that one in person. They’re going to have to drag me away from the next drag race I go to.